When writing about the Coventry raid in his book The First and the Last, Germany's Commander of Fighter Forces, General Adolf Galland, stated that "The German
Luftwaffe never again repeated this success in this form. Coventry was an
accidental success."1 Whether or not it is accurate to call the Coventry raid an
accidental success is a debatable point, but there is no debate about the fact that for
the GAF the raid clearly was a spectacular success. Over 100 acres of the city were
destroyed, one-third of the major industrial firms were either destroyed or suffered
significant damage, almost 20,000 dwellings were totally destroyed or suffered
major damage, 1,431 civilians were either killed or seriously injured, and all of this
destruction was achieved with the loss of only a single, twin-engine German
bomber and its four-man crew. Considering the relative size of the city, this raid was
the most concentrated and the most destructive of all the Luftwaffe raids during the
entire German air campaign directed against the British Isles.

The final casualty figures for the raid include 568 killed, 863 seriously
injured, and 393 individuals slightly injured.
2 To deal with the large number of
individuals killed in the bombing, Coventry officials decided to hold two separate
mass burials, one on November 20 when 172 bodies were buried and the second
on November 23 when 250 additional victims' bodies were buried. These were the
first mass funerals to be held in Great Britain during the war. Photographs of the
open graves showing coffin after coffin draped with Union Jack flags and wreaths
were dispatched around the globe. These photographs were widely published by
the press and had a chilling effect on worldwide public opinion.

The first official British account of the raid came from a Minister of Home
Security inspector who toured the city two days after the bombing. His report
included the following details:
3

The principal damage occurred in the medieval centre of the city, about
three-quarters of a mile by half a mile. Of this at least one-third is

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